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Twitter reported that requests to reveal user data have skyrocketed 40 percent since July, with the majority of demands coming from the US government. Overall, the demands affected 128 percent more account holders during the second half of 2014, according to Twitter's latest transparency report.

We saw an overall increase of 40 percent in government requests for Twitter user account information since our last report. While requests have increased in many countries, Russia, Turkey, and the United States stand out from the rest. In Russia, we went from having never received a request to receiving more than 100 requests for account information during this reporting period. We did not provide information in response to any of those requests. Requests from Turkey increased over 150 percent. Again, we did not provide information in response to any of those requests. Meanwhile, we saw a 29 percent increase in requests from the United States, while our compliance rate increased 8 percent.

Twitter's transparency report, meanwhile, also notes an 84 percent jump in government demands to remove content from Twitter. The top three requesting countries were Turkey, at 477 requests; Russia, at 91 requests; and Germany, at 43 requests.

Overall, San Francisco-based Twitter said that during the second half of 2014, it received 2,871 global requests for data on as many as 7,144 Twitter users. It said it fulfilled about 52 percent of the demands. The US government ranked first in requests, at 1,622—a 29 percent increase over the last reporting period.

Twitter said it also received 142 requests by "non-government parties" seeking data on 455 accounts. That data was requested for civil lawsuits and by defendants in criminal cases.

"We have produced account information in response to 25% of these non-voluntary requests, which originated from the following 11 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, and the United States," according to the transparency report.

Twitter's Kessel acknowledged that its transparency report opens the microblogging site up to criticism. But the company is following the law across the globe.

"Providing this level of transparency is not without its complications and sometimes means we get tough questions and criticism about our decisions," he said. "However, this candid feedback helps us to be evermore thoughtful about our policies and decisions regarding content and compliance as we navigate complex, diverse legal regimes around the world."

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David Kravets
The senior editor for Ars Technica. Founder of TYDN fake news site. Technologist. Political scientist. Humorist. Dad of two boys. Been doing journalism for so long I remember manual typewriters with real paper. Emaildavid.kravets@arstechnica.com//Twitter@dmkravets